The Deapth of Friendship
by SearchingHeart
Summary: How deep does friendship run? Will entropy take the crew of the Enterprise for a freakish joy ride down the fabric of the future? Will Jim Kirk loose his mind and his ship to one who was once his friend? One he – at one time - called brother?


Chapter 1: Devil On Your Doorstep  
  
By: SearchingHeart  
  
Disclaimer: How deep does friendship run? Will entropy take the crew of the Enterprise for a freakish joy ride down the fabric of the future? Will Jim Kirk loose his mind and his ship to one who was once his friend? One he - at one time - called brother?  
  
(McCoy POV)  
  
The patient was beginning to babble. Dr. McCoy walked over and tirelessly checked the bio signs again.  
  
"What is the depth of friendship, Doctor? How far is the line? How deep does the loyalty flow? Who has my ship, how are things.  
  
"I don't know, Jim. I suppose there are some things in this universe that have no explanations."  
  
"Spock.. Where is Spock!"?  
  
Doctor McCoy looked at the patient on the bed before him, struggling with labored breaths. The indicator lights above Jim Kirks bed red and entirely different story from what the Doctor saw before him.  
  
The lights said that Jim was in critical condition, but recovering. His body would once again mend from the agonies it had suffered.  
  
Yet his mind.  
  
While Jim Kirk still lay there, muttering questions, questions that the Doctor had been answering over and over again for hours, Starfleet Security had come for Spock. He had been led from the brig to the transporter in maximum-security restraints. They had read him his rights on the way down.  
  
"You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you are not able to afford legal representation, a lawyer will be provided."  
  
And so on, and so forth. Spock would not have answered the questions, even if he could have been able to. Yet, the device on his head prevented him from doing anything but walking and listening. As for all suspected telepathic traitors, and murderers, a mind restraint was used so the person wearing it could not attack one of their guards mentally.  
  
It was an ugly and inhuman device. McCoy despised it.  
  
But the punishments of the federation always fit the crime, and Spock's crime was ugly and inhuman. At least by Starfleet's standards.  
  
He had come aboard the Enterprise while she had been docked or repairs on earth station Alpha 9, and had smuggled aboard with him a terrorist weapon.  
  
The Z 29 was a phaser that was silent and deadly. The victim didn't even know that she or he had been hit until their insides started to decay.  
  
McCoy turned the lights off in the medical ward and shut the door. He had to pry his fist off the handle. In his mind he relived the three earth rending minutes on the bridge. The three minutes where Jim Kirk had preserved both their lives, and Spock...  
  
Spock had destroyed Jim's mind.  
  
Earlier (McCoy POV)  
  
"Spock, what are you doing back so early. I though you were going to Maine for a day to fish?"  
  
"I found I had other unfinished business aboard ship here that needed my attention, Captain."  
  
Captain Kirk smiled slightly to himself, realizing that he could do nothing to talk his firs officer out of it.  
  
"Very well, Spock, I wont tell you that you have to take shore leave. Just try and relax a little, ok."  
  
"I will endeavor to do so, Captain."  
  
Jim Kirk had turned to Leonard McCoy who had been waiting impatiently behind him for the Captain to finish with Spock. McCoy handed the Captain a pad and began explaining in brief, the more serious stuff on the medical report. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spock turn around and reach under the Science station for something.  
  
McCoy had returned his eyes to point something out in specific to the Captain, and when he looked up again, Spock was pointing a rather nasty and deadly looking weapon at the Captains back.  
  
"Jim, look out!!"  
  
McCoy reacted with the training and experience of being a Starfleet field surgeon and Chief Medical Officer. He pushed Jim behind the large Captains chair and ducked himself as the air behind him hummed with phaser radiation.  
  
"Spock! Are you insane!!!!" cried the Doctor.  
  
Spock did not answer. The Vulcan moved with superhuman speed. Shielding himself behind the Helm and Navigation board, he fired again. The chair vibrated as the Captain and the Doctor swiveled it to keep out of range.  
  
"Computer, go to red alert. Shut all doors to the bridge, alert space dock!"  
  
"Jim!"  
  
The Doctor had to duck again before he finished the sentence. Jim had just warned the ship that there was a disaster on the bridge, he had alerted Starfleet command. But also he had effectively sealed them in with a deranged Vulcan.  
  
"Spock! Give it up," called Kirk, "Starfleet knows. You can't get away with this."  
  
Another shot. The Captains chair was melting before their eyes, it wouldn't stand for long. There was a knocking behind the emergency turbolift, and the sound of phaser cutters. McCoy compared the disintegration of the chair that afforded them so little protection and the door at the turbolift. He calculated that help would be a few seconds two late.  
  
"Captain Kirk!" Called Spock, " Give up the Enterprise to my control and your life will be spared."  
  
"You have got to be joking Spock!"  
  
The Chair was gone then and McCoy and Kirk were looking down the barrel of Spock's energy weapon.  
  
"I assure you, Vulcans never joke."  
  
"Well you can't have my ship, Spock, and you can't escape, so what are you going to do?"  
  
"I will have your ship."  
  
"Then you are going to have to kill me for it, Spock.  
  
Can you do that.  
  
Can you kill me."  
  
"I do not believe that I will have to kill YOU to get your ship, Captain."  
  
Spock turned and pointed the energy weapon at McCoy.  
  
.TBC.. 


End file.
